The Skies of Pern

by Anne McCaffrey

  Not that Toric was a bad Holder. Quite rightly, he insisted that everyone earn his or her right to hold on his land. The man had had to put up with the vagaries of the Oldtimers as well as incursions by thousands of folk streaming south, hoping for easier living. For all the tribulations the immigrants left behind, they acquired as many new ones here—but many of their supposed grievances would be minor.

  Sintary left most of the eager petitioners behind as they began to read through the Report or went to look for shade, food, and drink. He was given two more crumpled sheets on his way down to the Harper’s hall and slipped into a small entrance when he spotted Dorse and one of the hard-faced men Toric used as guards hurrying up the stairs. They were busy watching their feet, but he particularly didn’t like the obstinate and sly expression on Dorse’s features. Sintary knew that Dorse often did “errands” for his Lord Holder.

  When the two men had passed around the bend out of sight, Sintary continued on his way. That’s when he heard the crash of glassware and the dull sound of an axe hitting wood. But Dorse and the other man were on their way up. So who was throwing things about?

  With the petitions weighing him down, he decided to get them safely to his hold before he returned to investigate the noise.

  Healer Hall—1.1.31

  Masterhealer Oldive eased back from the worktop, closed eyes bleary from peering so long into the microscope, and sighed deeply. So similar and yet the samples did not match anything from Aivas’s pathology files sufficiently to call them the same virus. Ah, what splendid, and frightening, new dimensions for learning—and Healing.

  Slowly, aware that his body was cramped from inactivity, he extended one leg as far as he could from the rung of his stool. Letting it hang down, and gripping the seat of his perch, he stretched the other leg. Then he raised his arms as far as his deformity allowed before rotating his neck to ease those aching muscles.

  “Oldive?”

  “Oh, my word, Sharra!” He swiveled the stool so that he could face her in the corner where she, too, had been single-mindedly peering into her microscope. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”

  This laboratory was such a pleasure to work in and today he and Sharra had it to themselves, since anyone with any sense was up at Fort Hold’s Gather Square enjoying themselves. Through the wide expanse of special triple-plated glass, he could see the banners displayed from the windows of the Hold and yet not feel the cold that was gripping the northern continent. While he wished he could be in two places at once—and right now, one of them would by preference be the large sunlit Landing Healer facility—he was still luxuriating in the new headquarters at Fort. “Head quarters”—such a lovely concept and such splendid “quarters,”—with sufficient teaching rooms and airy dormitories, as well as more aspiring healers than ever before. More need of them, too, he admitted.

  “We do get involved, don’t we?” Sharra commented with a tired smile. “Have you been able to identify that virus?”

  He shook his tired head.

  “Could it be one of those mutations that are mentioned in Pathology Records?” she asked. “Considering what we’ve learned about such things, there’s been plenty of time for them to alter from the specimens Aivas had.”

  “And that would account for the fact that the plague can decimate otherwise healthy holds,” Oldive said sadly. He gave himself a little shake. No sense being morbid. “But such things have been with us a long time and are, fortunately, not upon us right now. While this is the last day of Turnover, and you should be with Jaxom and your children.”

  “They are all very well occupied with Ruatha’s festivities,” she said fondly. “Jaxom had to read the Report and accept petitions. I could do much more here than sit there and be bored, you know.” She indicated the slides that she had been studying. She kneaded the nape of her neck, arching her back against having hunched so long over her instrument. “Will we ever have one of those electron microscopes that Aivas mentioned?”

  Oldive permitted himself a chuckle as he carefully descended from the high stool. Had his spine developed normally, he would have been tall; his legs were long. They were the same length, but the malformation of his backbone had resulted in a pelvic slant. With a slight lift in one shoe, his limp was barely noticeable.

  “There are so many calls on Master Morilton’s skills,” he said ruefully, and gestured to the cabinets filled with special glass products, the myriad paraphernalia that had been created by the Glass-Smith for healer use.

  “A start, of course, on the quantity needed to equip all Healer Halls,” Sharra said in an acid tone, “especially when the Council unanimously—for once—agreed that the Healer Hall has priority. We are concerned with the health and well-being of everybody, not just new gadgets that we’ve done without for twenty-five hundred Turns.”

  Though Oldive completely agreed with her, he raised a hand in gentle rebuke as he walked across the airy room to the small stove where the klah pot was kept warm. Someone had brought in a tray of food. He flipped back the napkins and saw the generous servings. When had these been brought? The meatrolls were still warm. He oughtn’t to concentrate to the exclusion of everything else.

  “Someone brought some food,” he informed her.

  “Oh, yes, I should have told you,” she said contritely as she slipped off her stool and joined him. “I just wanted to finish that tray of slides.” She poured klah for them both.

  “Oh, we do very well, my dear Sharra,” he said, talking around a mouthful of roll. “We have achieved all this—” He gestured around them. “—and Morilton is considering dedicating one Hall to nothing but Healer requirements.” He glanced back at his workstation and his unidentifiable virus smear. Then held up his hand as an odd sound impinged on the silence of the laboratory.

  Sharra listened hard. “Sounds like breaking glass. Breaking glass!” She repeated, setting down the mug and rushing to the door. As soon as she’d opened it, the noise was far more audible, and far too close.

  “Meer, Talla,” she cried, calling for her two fire-lizards.

  “What’s the matter? What’s going on? What clumsy apprentice has been let loose?” Oldive cried.

  Despite his physical disability, Oldive could move swiftly, but Sharra, after one startled look to her right, hauled him back from the threshold and closed the door, throwing the latch.

  Ruth!

  The white dragon might be asleep on Ruatha’s fire-heights, but he’d respond to her mental call from any place. Meer and Talla arrived, midair, mouths open to shriek panic, but Sharra’s stern command aborted that instinct.

  “I don’t know who, Oldive,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “but there are people crashing about in the stillroom as if they thought no one would hear them.”

  Once again the intrepid Masterhealer attempted to leave the room and she caught him by the arm.

  “There shouldn’t be anyone else here but us,” he said grimly. He had given leave to even the lowliest apprentice to enjoy this last day of Turn’s End.

  “But there are,” she said, her eyes sparkling with anger as she opened the door to the noise of considerable destruction. A shadow fell across the long window of the laboratory and she grinned, pointing. “However, we shall deal with it.”

  Oldive gasped at the sight of a white body, wings outstretched, all but plastered against the glass, his eyes flashing the red and orange of alarm.

  Ruth! Sharra said, relieved that he had responded so quickly. Tell the Hold’s fire-lizards to attack the intruders. Fire-lizards held Ruth, the white dragon, in awed respect and would obey him without question. She gave him a very clear mental image of what she had seen in her brief glimpse down the hall. Meer and Talla cheeped once and disappeared. Scant seconds later, both she and Oldive heard loud cries, angry fire-lizard bugles, shouts of pain, and more banging and crashing.

  Sharra opened the door wide enough to see down the hall. A mass of fire-lizards was trying to enter the stillroom.
Then the mass split into several groups, which zipped off, screeching challenge, swooping down the stairwells at each end to the other levels of the hall.

  There are several groups throwing things about in the Hall, Ruth told her. That is wrong. Fort dragons come.

  She and Oldive watched as the fire-lizards drove four people out of the stillroom. They could hear human cries echoing from other points. Oldive groaned in dismay.

  “They’ll be damned sorry they ever thought of this,” she told him angrily as she started purposefully down the hall. “Damned sorry.”

  “I never thought of—intrusions—when we built here,” Oldive murmured, shaking his head in bitter denial of the event as he followed. He’d been so proud of this new Hall, with its marvelous equipment, its spacious and well-organized facilities. The previous quarters had been better protected in the angle between the Harper Hall and Fort Hold. But the Healer Hall was usually so busy that, on a normal day, no unauthorized persons would have been on this floor.

  Sharra reached the stillroom first. The reek of spilled liquids and wet herbs was nothing to her appalled survey of empty shelves, cabinets with broken doors, glass shards everywhere. Even the marble worktops had been cracked. She slammed the door shut to spare Oldive the sight.

  “Everything’s ruined,” she said tersely and pulled him toward the stairs, dreadfully certain now by the sounds of screams and shouts from the lower floors that there would be more damage elsewhere.

  Fire-lizards drove the intruders out of the Hall where the humans were halted by the sight of a dozen dragons, their wings spread to form an impregnable wall, their eyes whirling red with anger. More dragons hovered overhead, their wings casting dark shadows on the scene below. Shouts and drumbeats echoed down Fort’s rocky canyon, confirming that reinforcements were on their way. The cowering vandals were herded into a knot, clothes rent by fire-lizard beaks and talons, bloodied hands raised to protect their faces. While no dragon would hurt a human, the fire-lizards were under no such restraint and darted in to peck or claw when anyone in that huddle moved.

  Call them off now, Ruth, Sharra said, pausing to catch her breath on the broad top step, and thank them for coming so quickly. We need the wretches alive and able to tell us why they despoiled a Healer Hall.

  Though some of the wild fire-lizards looked as if they would disobey, a second rumbling bark from Ruth caused them to disappear, leaving the dragons to stand guard. When the dragons did not advance, one of the men uncoiled and stood up, glowering at Sharra and Oldive.

  “Why are you here?” the Masterhealer asked at his sternest. He counted fifteen men and women in front of him, a sufficient number to trash more than his fine stillroom. His heart sank at the destruction they must have done. “Why have you destroyed the very materials and medicines—”

  “The Abomination must be halted!” a man shouted, his body taut with his fanaticism. “Its taint removed forever from Pern.”

  “Abomination?” The word made Sharra shudder. That’s what some people called Aivas. And those Abominators had kidnapped Master Robinton to force the Council to shut Aivas down because of the technology he represented. They’d tried to prevent the restoration of the technology that their ancestors had used and that many, many people wished to revive. Oldive caught her eye and his expression turned bleaker still.

  The others began to chant, shaking their fists in the air, undeterred, as if they now realized that the dragons would not harm them.

  “Vileness must be expunged!” the leader went on, louder, more daring. “Erase abominations.”

  Sharra began to shiver in the cold. Oldive’s face looked pinched. Though she could see nothing beyond the high interlaced wings of the dragons, she could hear the pounding of hooves on the hard-packed road, the rumble of a cart, and shouts of many voices. Lioth, bronze dragon of N’ton, the Fort Weyrleader, cocked his head as if he had understood the taunts, his eyes beginning to whirl with orange spurts.

  They’re coming, Sharra, Ruth said and craned his head ominously toward the protestors. Their chanting noticeably faltered as the sound of hoofbeats and shouts penetrated to the dragon circle. Their leader rallied them to greater efforts.

  “Tradition must be upheld!” He glared around him, his angular face and burning eyes inciting his followers. “Halt abominations.”

  “Turn back to tradition at Turnover!” screeched one of the three women, waving a bloody hand at Ruth, who frowned down at her.

  “Our petitions have been ignored!”

  “We protest the Abomination!”

  “And all its works!”

  “Abomination! Abomination!”

  Stoically, Sharra and Oldive endured the chanting.

  Smoothly, as humans neared, the dragons began to close their wings and give way, to allow the reinforcements a clear path to the despoilers. Lioth stepped closer to Ruth; Sharra knew that his rider, N’ton, would be in the vanguard. But it was two of Lord Groghe’s sons who arrived first, riding bareback on a gray runnerbeast that wore no more than a headcollar. Haligon hauled it to a stop just short of the captives, doing a flying dismount to confront them. Such was the fury in his face and manner that the group backed away from him.

  In one of those irrelevant observations that can occur even in moments of crisis, Sharra noted that gray hairs marred the brown of Haligon’s fine Gather clothes. Horon, taking a belligerent stance next to his brother, was equally untidy.

  A group of blue-clad Harpers, led by Masterharper Sebell, arrived on foot, to increase the force. The cart, driven by N’ton and crammed with holders, some clutching clubs, nearly rammed into them. With an enlarged audience, the prisoners renewed the volume of their defiant messages.

  “Destroy all the Abomination’s devices.”

  “Purity for Pern!”

  “Turn to Tradition.”

  “Avoid abominations!”

  The holders began booing from the cart as they jumped down, clubs raised threateningly. Those in Healer green continued to where Sharra and Oldive stood on the top step.

  “See what damage has been done, Keita,” Oldive ordered in a low voice to the Healer journeywoman who rushed to him. A convulsive shiver ran through him. “Check the infirmary first.”

  Sharra was wracked with compassion for him. “A cloak for Master Oldive,” she added urgently, suddenly realizing that she was feeling the cold seep through the adrenaline rush of the last few minutes.

  “Harpers!” Sebell said, gesturing for his men to help. “Assist Keita.”

  Over these orders, the chant continued in rabid cadence—until Lord Groghe reached the scene. As well his mount had been saddled, Sharra thought, just as someone threw a fur-lined wrap over her shoulders, for Groghe was no longer agile enough to ride bareback like his sons.

  “Abomination away!”

  “Restore our tradition!”

  “Shut up!” Groghe bellowed, the volume of his voice as intimidating as the powerful runnerbeast he pulled up just short of knocking the leader down. The man rocked back and it was then that Sharra noticed that he, and the rest of his vandals, had the effrontery to be wearing green: not the genuine Healer green but close enough to answer how they had been able to gain access to the Hall.

  At his most fearsome, face suffused with fury, eyes protruding, Groghe stared down at the man. He looked larger than life, fine in his Gather clothes with a cape billowing out over his mount’s rump.

  The silence was palpable. Then it was broken by a plaintive moan.

  “I’m bleeding,” one of the women said in a mixture of outrage, shock, and horror as blood dripped from her face to her upheld hand.

  “You can bleed to death for all I care,” Sharra snapped, furious.

  “Head wounds invariably bleed freely,” Oldive said, descending the wide steps. Sharra hurriedly followed. Throwing back the corner of the cloak someone had put on his shoulders, Oldive reached into the belt pouch that he always carried and drew out a bandage to staunch the wound. Although the wom
an shrank away from him, her eyes wild, he was able to assess the long gash on her head. “It will require stitching.”

  The woman went white with shock, a look of absolute horror on her face before she folded in a faint.

  “No!” cried the leader, dropping to his knees to shield her body. “No! No abomination! Spare her that!”

  Groghe let out a contemptuous oath, his mount dancing nervously. All the onlookers echoed Groghe’s reaction and cries of “shame” were loud and angry. Oldive, however, turned a look of mixed compassion and rebuke on the protester and sighed with genuine regret.

  “Let her bleed, Healer!” someone advised.

  Others around Oldive mockingly repeated “No, spare her, spare her.”

  “Healers have been stitching wounds as needed for the past two and a half centuries,” Oldive told the leader with quiet dignity. “Still, she is unlikely to bleed to death.”

  “More’s the pity,” was the quick gibe from a spectator.

  Oldive held up his hand and the crowd turned respectfully silent as he went on. “The laceration is long and shallow. If the scalp is not stitched, there will be an unsightly scar. The hair must be cut away to prevent infection. Numbweed would reduce her discomfort.” He paused and then added in a wry tone, “Numbweed flourished on Pern long before our ancestors arrived.”

  With each of Oldive’s sentences, the prisoners had moaned or writhed. The leader glared at the Healer.

  “By giving my advice freely, I have fulfilled my duty as a healer,” Oldive said stolidly. “It is up to you to accept or reject.”